Search results for: executive compensation packages

Authors: Imane Khalil, Quinn Pratt

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In a nuclear reactor, an array of fuel rods containing stacked uranium dioxide pellets clad with zircalloy is the heat source for a thermodynamic cycle of energy conversion from heat to electricity. After fuel is used in a nuclear reactor, the assemblies are stored underwater in a spent nuclear fuel pool at the nuclear power plant while heat generation and radioactive decay rates decrease before it is placed in packages for dry storage or transportation. A computational model of a Boiling Water Reactor spent fuel assembly is modeled using FLUENT, the computational fluid dynamics package. Heat transfer simulations were performed on the two-dimensional 9x9 spent fuel assembly to predict the maximum cladding temperature for different input to the FLUENT model. Uncertainty quantification is used to predict the heat transfer and the maximum temperature profile inside the assembly.

Keywords: spent nuclear fuel, conduction, heat transfer, uncertainty quantification

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Authors: Esayas Geleta

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Within the last two decades in many sub-Saharan African countries, a large-scale acquisition (lease, concession, outright purchase) of extensive areas of farmland commonly labeled as ‘idle’ and ‘under-utilized’ has resulted in displacement and dispossession and dispossession without ‘compensation.’ This paper seeks to critically illustrate the processes and the consequences of the ‘land grabbing project’ in Ethiopia. Drawing on the theory of participatory development and empirical studies undertaken in Ethiopia, the paper elucidates the power dynamics that influence how and why dislocation and dispossession occur. The paper then demonstrates why the land-grabbing project, which was hugely supported by many international organizations, has largely failed in Ethiopia. Through a critical analysis of the process of ‘land grabbing’ in Ethiopia, the paper contributes to a more adequate and critical understanding of contemporary land deals and their social and environmental consequences.

Keywords: land grabbing, human rights, dispossession, resistance, governance

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Authors: Krishna Kistan Govender, Alex Masianoga

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The aim of this explanatory study was to critically understand how ethical leadership impacts employee creative behaviour, as well as the creative behaviour dimensions, in a South African transport and logistics SOE. A quantitative study was conducted using a pre-developed questionnaire, and data for 160 middle and executive managers was analysed through structural equation modelling and multiple regression techniques conducted with the Smart PLS statistical software. All five hypothesized relationships were supported, and it was confirmed that ethical leadership has a significant positive influence on employee creative behaviour, as well as on each of the creative behaviour dimensions, namely: idea exploration, idea generation, idea championing, and idea implementation.

Keywords: ethical leaders, employee creative behaviour, state-owned enterprises, South Africa

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Authors: Davit Mirzoyan, Ararat Khachatryan

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A process corner monitoring circuit (PCMC) is presented in this work. The circuit generates a signal, the logical value of which depends on the process corner only. The signal can be used in both digital and analog circuits for testing and compensation of process variations (PV). The presented circuit uses only metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistors, which allow increasing its detection accuracy, decrease power consumption and area. Due to its simplicity the presented circuit can be easily modified to monitor parametrical variations of only n-type and p-type MOS (NMOS and PMOS, respectively) transistors, resistors, as well as their combinations. Post-layout simulation results prove correct functionality of the proposed circuit, i.e. ability to monitor the process corner (equivalently die-to-die variations) even in the presence of within-die variations.

Keywords: detection, monitoring, process corner, process variation

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Authors: A. Morsli, A. Tlemçani, N. Ould Cherchali, M. S. Boucherit

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This article presents two methods for the compensation of harmonics generated by a nonlinear load. The first is the classic method P-Q. The second is the controller by modern method of artificial intelligence specifically fuzzy logic. Both methods are applied to an Active Power Filter shunt (APFs) based on a three-phase voltage converter at five levels NPC topology. In calculating the harmonic currents of reference, we use the algorithm P-Q and pulse generation, we use the intersective PWM. For flexibility and dynamics, we use fuzzy logic. The results give us clear that the rate of Harmonic Distortion issued by fuzzy logic is better than P-Q.

Keywords: fuzzy logic controller, P-Q method, pulse width modulation (PWM), shunt active power filter (sAPF), total harmonic distortion (THD)

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Authors: Larry O. Awo, Precious I. Nwachukwu

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The increase in proliferation of gambling venues in Nigeria in the last decade has led to an increase in gambling prevalence among the youths who have shown signs of problem gambling and its associated risks and pressures to parents and therapists. The present study sought to investigate the roles of counterfactual thinking (CFT) forms (upward CFT vs downward CFT) in the relationship between impulsivity and gambling intention of 371 Nigerian youths who have gambled prior to the study (mean age = 17.37, SD = 4.13). Hayes PROCESS macro result revealed that, after controlling for age, downward CFT was negatively associated with and contributed to a decrease in gambling intention, while upward CFT was positively associated with and contributed to an increase in gambling intention. Mediation analysis result showed that upward CFT amplified the contribution of impulsivity to gambling intention. The association between impulsivity and gambling was partially weakened by downward CFT, even though this weakness was not significant. We conclude that gambling therapies should encourage packages that attenuate upward CFT impulsivity and at the same time, increase downward CFT skills.

Keywords: upward counterfactuals, downward counterfactuals, gambling intention, nigerian youths

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Authors: Temesgen Geremew

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ZnO is currently receiving a lot of attention in the semiconductor industry due to its unique characteristics. ZnO is widely used in solar cells, heat-reflecting glasses, optoelectronic bias, and detectors. In this composition, we provide an overview of the ZnO thin flicks' packages, methods of characterization, and implicit operations. They consist of Transmission spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, Field emigration surveying electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. This review content also demonstrates how ZnO thin flicks function in electrical components for piezoelectric bias, optoelectronics, detectors, and renewable energy sources. Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films offer a captivating tapestry of possibilities due to their unique blend of electrical, optical, and mechanical properties. This review delves into the realm of their potential applications and future prospects, highlighting the pivotal contributions of research endeavors aimed at tailoring their functionalities.

Keywords: Zinc oxide, raman spectroscopy, thin films, piezoelectric devices

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Authors: Shahin Zanbaghi, Saeed Samet

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The internet has transformed the way we shop. Previously, most of our purchases came in the form of shopping trips to a nearby store. Now, it’s as easy as clicking a mouse. But with great convenience comes great responsibility. We have to be constantly vigilant about our personal information. In this work, our proposed approach is to encrypt the information printed on the physical packages, which include personal information in plain text, using a symmetric encryption algorithm; then, we store that encrypted information into a Blockchain network rather than storing them in companies or corporations centralized databases. We present, implement and assess a blockchain-based system using Ethereum smart contracts. We present detailed algorithms that explain the details of our smart contract. We present the security, cost, and performance analysis of the proposed method. Our work indicates that the proposed solution is economically attainable and provides data integrity, security, transparency, and data traceability.

Keywords: blockchain, Ethereum, smart contract, commit-reveal scheme

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Authors: Renuka Mahadevan, Sharon Chang

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This exploratory study is based on potential cruisers’ monetary valuation of cruise attributes. Using choice experiment, monetary trade-offs between four different cruise attributes are examined with Australians as a case study. We found 50% of the sample valued variety of onboard cruise activities the least while 30% were willing to pay A$87 for cruise-organised activities per day, and the remaining 20% regarded an ocean view to be most valuable at A$125. Latent class modelling was then applied and results revealed that potential cruisers’ valuation of the attributes can be used to segment the market into adventurers, budget conscious and comfort lovers. Evidence showed that socio demographics are not as insightful as lifestyle preferences in developing cruise packages and pricing that would appeal to potential cruisers. Marketing also needs to counter the mindset of potential cruisers’ belief that cruises are often costly and that cruising can be done later in life.

Keywords: latent class modelling, choice experiment, potential cruisers, market segmentation, willingness to pay

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Authors: Changiz Valmohammadi

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The main purpose of this study is to explore the perception of Iranian experts and executive managers of sample organizations on the benefits and barriers of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions implementation. Based on the review of the related literature and web sites, benefits and barriers of successful implementation to IoT solutions were identified. Through a self-administered questionnaire which was collected from 67 Iranian organizations the ranking and importance of benefits and barriers of IoT solutions implementation were determined based on the perception of the experts of the surveyed organizations. Analysis of data and the obtained results revealed that “improved customer experience” and “Supply chain optimization and responsiveness” are the most important benefits that the survey organizations expect to reap as a result of IoT solutions implementation. Also,” Integration challenges" and “cannot find right suppliers” were ranked as the most challenging barriers to IoT solutions implementation.

Keywords: internet of things (IoT), exploratory study, benefits, barriers, Iran

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Authors: S. Gao, S. Srirattayawong

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In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed for studying the effect of surface roughness profile on the EHL problem. The cylinders contact geometry, meshing and calculation of the conservation of mass and momentum equations are carried out by using the commercial software packages ICEMCFD and ANSYS Fluent. The user defined functions (UDFs) for density, viscosity and elastic deformation of the cylinders as the functions of pressure and temperature have been defined for the CFD model. Three different surface roughness profiles are created and incorporated into the CFD model. It is found that the developed CFD model can predict the characteristics of fluid flow and heat transfer in the EHL problem, including the leading parameters such as the pressure distribution, minimal film thickness, viscosity, and density changes. The obtained results show that the pressure profile at the center of the contact area directly relates to the roughness amplitude. The rough surface with kurtosis value over 3 influences the fluctuated shape of pressure distribution higher than other cases.

Keywords: CFD, EHL, kurtosis, surface roughness

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Authors: Neelam Kadyan

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Global environmental change is happening at an alarming rate in the present world. Floods, Tsunamis’, Avalanches, Change in Weather patterns, Rise in sea temperature, Landslides, are only few evidences of this change. To regulate such alarming growth of global change in environment certain regulatory system or mechanism is required. Nuisance,negligence,absolute liability,strict liability and trespass are some of the effective common law principles which are helpful in environmental problems. What we need today is sufficient law and adequate machinery to enforce the legal standards. Without law environmental standards cannot be enforced and once again there is need to adopt the common law approach in solving the problem of environmental change as through this approach the affected person can get compensation and as the same time it puts check on wrongdoer.

Keywords: global environmental problems, nuisance, negligence, trespass, strict liability, absolute liability

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Authors: Miju Choi

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Shopping tourism is an emerging concept in tourism research, thus contradicting the notion that shopping is not a novel idea. Tourists have long been performing shopping activities, such as purchasing authentic handicrafts and souvenirs, to benefit from a pleasant tourism experience. Some scholars regarded shopping as one of the oldest tourist activities and stressed that a trip is incomplete without shopping. Others then asserted that shopping is inseparable from other activities in tourist destinations and may in fact be considered a main purpose for travel. In other words, shopping is regarded as an incidental tourist activity, thereby indicating its potential as a primary travel motivation. The current study investigates the personal values of shopping tourists and their satisfaction levels. Via convenience sampling, 230 samples were collected. The software packages SPSS Statistics 20.0 and AMOS 20.0 were used for statistical analysis. Findings showed that both hedonic and utilitarian values positively influence tourist satisfaction and positive word of mouth. Therefore, this research deepens understanding regarding tourist behavior in the context of shopping tourism research.

Keywords: shopping tourism, hedonic value, utilitarian value, tourist satisfaction

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Authors: Natalia Kajka, Agnieszka Kulik

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The aim of the study is to present the results regarding differences in perception of cognitive progress of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by adults and children themselves. The experiment was attended by 45 children with ADHD, their parents and teachers. The children attended the 3-month metacognitive training. Both children and adults were examined before and after joining this project. In order to show significant differences between the first and second measurement of the test, non-parametric Wilcoxon tests were performed. The analysis showed statistically significant differences in the change of cognitive functioning in children with ADHD participating in metacognitive training, this was also confirmed by the results of the parents' research. There were no significant differences in the teachers' assessment of these children.

Keywords: ADHD, executive function, Golem effect metacognitive training

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Authors: Sahar Shahsavaripour Ghazanfarpour

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As our daily life depends on quality of built services by systems and using devices in our environment; so education and model of software′s quality will be so important. By daily growth in software′s systems and using them so much, progressing process and requirements′ evaluation in primary level of progress especially architecture level in software get more important. Modern driver architecture changes an in dependent model of a level into some specific models that their purpose is reducing number of software changes into an executive model. Process of designing software engineering is mid-automated. The needed quality attribute in designing architecture and quality attribute in representation are in architecture models. The main problem is the relationship between needs, and elements in some aspect with implicit models and input sources in process. It’s because there is no detection ability. The MART profile is use to describe real-time properties and perform plat form modeling.

Keywords: MDA, DW, OMG, UML, AKB, software architecture, ontology, evaluation

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Authors: Luedech Girdwichai, Witthaya Mekhum, Namthip Kleebbuaban

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This research is aimed at studying work efficiency of the supporting staff at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University by different categories. Supporting staff of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University consists of government officers, permanent employees, permanent university staff, temporary university staff, and staff of the temporary university employees and government employees, totaling 242. The tools used in this research were questionnaires and data were analyzed by using computer software packages. Statistics includes frequency distribution, percentage, mean and standard deviation. The results showed that the work efficiency of the supporting staff at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University is high in all areas: flexibility in operation, ability to work with others, productivity and work efficiency, human relations with colleagues and commanders, understanding of the work, and communication with others, the university, colleagues, and commanders.

Keywords: satisfaction, work efficiency, supporting staff, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University

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Authors: Bhupeshwaran Mani, S. Radha, A. Jawahar, A. Sivasubramanian

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Here, we study the characteristic feature of conventional (ON-OFF keying) and soliton based transmission system. We consider 20 Gbps transmission system implemented with Conventional Single Mode Fiber (C-SMF) to examine the role of Gaussian pulse which is the characteristic of conventional propagation and hyperbolic-secant pulse which is the characteristic of soliton propagation in it. We note the influence of these pulses with respect to different dispersion lengths and soliton period in conventional and soliton system, respectively, and evaluate the system performance in terms of quality factor. From the analysis, we could prove that the soliton pulse has more consistent performance even for long distance without dispersion compensation than the conventional system as it is robust to dispersion. For the length of transmission of 200 Km, soliton system yielded Q of 33.958 while the conventional system totally exhausted with Q=0.

Keywords: dispersion length, retrun-to-zero (rz), soliton, soliton period, q-factor

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Authors: Isabel Mousinho de Figueiredo

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Pure economic loss can be brought into the 21st century and become a useful tool to keep the tort of negligence within reasonable limits, provided the concept is minutely reexamined. The term came about when wealth was physical, and Law wanted to be a modern science. As a tool to draw the line, it leads to satisfactory decisions in most cases, but needlessly creates distressing conundrums in others, and these are the ones parties bother to litigate about. Economic loss is deemed to be pure based on a blind negative criterion of physical harm, that inadvertently smelts vastly disparate problems into an indiscernible mass, with arbitrary outcomes. These shortcomings are usually dismissed as minor byproducts, for the lack of a better formula. Law could instead stick to the sound paradigms of the intended rule, and be more specific in identifying the losses deserving of compensation. This would provide a better service to Bench and Bar, and effectively assist everyone navigating the many challenges of Accident Law.

Keywords: accident law, comparative tort law, negligence, pure economic loss

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Authors: Amir Shafiq, Asif Shahzad, Shabbar Mehmood, Muhammad Saeed, Hamid Mustafa

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Administration of justice in a society is evolutionary process. In pre-modern societies vital organs that we consider separate today i.e. legislation, implementation and adjudication were controlled by a King, the sovereign authority. Whereas now it is recognized that Development of a country revolves in seven arenas i.e. Civil Society, Political Society, Economic Society, Legislature, Judiciary, Executive & Bureaucracy. Each society whether developing or developed, has need of institutions and structures that can resolve difference of opinions of private or public nature between contending parties. Administration of justice has a key-role in the development of the society. Through this paper, it is to highlight that an independent judiciary having the support of public opinion therefore is inevitable to wriggle out from such problems in order to restore and protect the fundamental rights, constitution and democratic political system in third world countries like Pakistan.

Keywords: role of judiciary, developing countries, judicial activism, present scenario

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Authors: Nirav Vaghela, Sanket Parekh

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Objective: Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) represent one of the most common and important occupational health problems in working populations, being responsible for a substantial impact on quality of life and incurring a major economic burden in compensation cost and lost wages. School teachers represent an occupational group among which there appears to be a high prevalence of MSD. Design: Three hundred and fourteen teachers were enrolled in this study. Teachers were interview with the Modified Nordic Questionnaire. Result: In current study total 314 participants have been recruited in that minimum age of participants is 22 and maximum age is 59 with mean 40.5± 9.88. Total prevalence of the MSD is 71.95% among the teachers. In that Female were more affected with 72% than the males with 28%. Conclusion: The teachers here in reported a high prevalence of musculoskeletal pain in the shoulder, knee and back.

Keywords: repetitive stress injury, pain, occupational hazards, disability, abneetism, physical health, quality of life

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Authors: K. B. Rajasekarababu, J. Karthik, G. Vinayagamurthy

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This paper is intended to explain the influence of major axis on aerodynamic characteristics of elliptical section. Many engineering applications such as off shore structures, bridge piers, civil structures and pipelines can be modelled as a circular cylinder but flow over complex bodies like, submarines, Elliptical wing, fuselage, missiles, and rotor blades, in which the parameters such as axis ratio can influence the flow characteristics of the wake and nature of separation. Influence of Major axis in Flow characteristics of elliptical sections are examined both experimentally and computationally in this study. For this research, four elliptical models with varying major axis [*AR=1, 4, 6, 10] are analysed. Experimental works have been conducted in a subsonic wind tunnel. Furthermore, flow characteristics on elliptical model are predicted from k-ε turbulence model using the commercial CFD packages by pressure based transient solver with Standard wall conditions.The analysis can be extended to estimation and comparison of Drag coefficient and Fatigue analysis of elliptical sections.

Keywords: elliptical section, major axis, aerodynamic characteristics, k-ε turbulence model

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Authors: Alpana Agarwal, Akhil Sharma

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This work presents a fully differential CMOS amplifier consisting of two self-biased gain boosted inverter stages, that provides an alternative to the power hungry operational amplifier. The self-biasing avoids the use of external biasing circuitry, thus reduces the die area, design efforts, and power consumption. In the present work, regulated cascode technique has been employed for gain boosting. The Miller compensation is also applied to enhance the phase margin. The circuit has been designed and simulated in 1.8 V 0.18 µm CMOS technology. The simulation results show a high DC gain of 100.7 dB, Unity-Gain Bandwidth of 107.8 MHz, and Phase Margin of 66.7^o with a power dissipation of 286 μW and makes it suitable candidate for the high resolution pipelined ADCs.

Keywords: CMOS amplifier, gain boosting, inverter-based amplifier, self-biased inverter

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Authors: Rafayel Azizyan, Valeri Arakelyan, Aram Gevorgyan, Varduhi Balayan, Emil Gevorgyan

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Currently, mathematical and computer modeling are widely used in different biological studies to predict or assess behavior of such complex systems as biological ones. This study deals with mathematical and computer modeling of bi-substrate enzymatic reactions, which play an important role in different biochemical pathways. The main objective of this study is to represent the results from in silico investigation of bi-substrate enzymatic reactions in the presence of uncompetitive inhibitors, as well as to describe in details the inhibition effects. Four models of uncompetitive inhibition were designed using different software packages. Particularly, uncompetitive inhibitor to the first [ES1] and the second ([ES1S2]; [FS2]) enzyme-substrate complexes have been studied. The simulation, using the same kinetic parameters for all models allowed investigating the behavior of reactions as well as determined some interesting aspects concerning influence of different cases of uncompetitive inhibition. Besides that shown, that uncompetitive inhibitors exhibit specific selectivity depending on mechanism of bi-substrate enzymatic reaction.

Keywords: mathematical modeling, bi-substrate enzymatic reactions, reversible inhibition

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Authors: Saki Makume

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Misogyny is a serious problem in the world that is predominantly patriarchal. South Africa is a very unequal society, so are the companies in this country. After 1994, laws were promulgated to outlaw unfair discrimination, amongst them discrimination based on gender. The presentation aims to share the experiences and learnings of Rand Water through its transformation journey. The environment was so hostile to women in the workplace that policies and practices excluded or unfairly discriminated against women. The paper will be in the form of a case study, predominantly qualitative and to a lesser extent quantitative. The results will show that the number of women at Board, Executive and Management levels have increased; and policies amended to be gender sensitive. Policies were developed that specifically protected women’s rights e.g. sexual harassment. A program like TechnoGirl was introduced to lure girl learners to Rand Water.

Keywords: gender mainstreaming, policies, transformation, unfair discrimination

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Authors: Qiang Ren

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In the past 20 years, under the high standard of international investment protection, there have been numerous cases of investors ignoring the host country's measures to protect human health. Examples include investment disputes triggered by the Argentine government's measures related to human health, quality, and price of drinking water under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Examples also include Philip Morris v. Australia, in which case the Australian government announced the passing of the Plain Packing of Cigarettes Act to address the threat of smoking to public health in 2010. In order to take advantage of the investment treaty protection between Hong Kong and Australia, Philip Morris Asia acquired Philip Morris Australia in February 2011 and initiated investment arbitration under the treaty before the passage of the Act in July 2011. Philip Morris claimed the Act constitutes indirect expropriation and violation of fair and equitable treatment and claimed 4.16 billion US dollars compensation. Fortunately, the case ended at the admissibility decision stage and did not enter the substantive stage. Generally, even if the host country raises a human health defense, most arbitral tribunals will rule that the host country revoke the corresponding policy and make huge compensation in accordance with the clauses in the bilateral investment treaty to protect the rights of investors. The significant imbalance in the rights and obligations of host states and investors in international investment treaties undermines the ability of host states to act in pursuit of human health and social interests beyond economic interests. This squeeze on the nation's public policy space and disregard for the human health costs of investors' activities raises the need to include human health in investment rulemaking. The current international investment law system that emphasizes investor protection fails to fully reflect the requirements of the host country for the healthy development of human beings and even often brings negative impacts to human health. At a critical moment in the reform of the international investment law system, in order to achieve mutual enhancement of investment returns and human health development, human health should play a greater role in influencing and shaping international investment rules. International investment agreements should not be limited to investment protection tools but should also be part of national development strategies to serve sustainable development and human health. In order to meet the requirements of the new sustainable development goals of the United Nations, human health should be emphasized in the formulation of international investment rules, and efforts should be made to shape a new generation of international investment rules that meet the requirements of human health and sustainable development.

Keywords: human health, international investment law, Philip Morris v. Australia, investor protection

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Authors: Veena Easvaradoss, Ebenezer Joseph, Sumathi Chandrasekaran, Sweta Jain, Aparna Anna Mathai, Senta Christy

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Working memory refers to a cognitive processing space where information is received, managed, transformed, and briefly stored. It is an operational process of transforming information for the execution of cognitive tasks in different and new ways. Many class room activities require children to remember information and mentally manipulate it. While the impact of chess training on intelligence and academic performance has been unequivocally established, its impact on working memory needs to be studied. This study, funded by the Cognitive Science Research Initiative, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, analyzed the effect of one-year chess training on the working memory of children. A pretest–posttest with control group design was used, with 52 children in the experimental group and 50 children in the control group. The sample was selected from children studying in school (grades 3 to 9), which included both the genders. The experimental group underwent weekly chess training for one year, while the control group was involved in extracurricular activities. Working memory was measured by two subtests of WISC-IV INDIA. The Digit Span Subtest involves recalling a list of numbers of increasing length presented orally in forward and in reverse order, and the Letter–Number Sequencing Subtest involves rearranging jumbled alphabets and numbers presented orally following a given rule. Both tasks require the child to receive and briefly store information, manipulate it, and present it in a changed format. The Children were trained using Winning Moves curriculum, audio- visual learning method, hands-on- chess training and recording the games using score sheets, analyze their mistakes, thereby increasing their Meta-Analytical abilities. They were also trained in Opening theory, Checkmating techniques, End-game theory and Tactical principles. Pre equivalence of means was established. Analysis revealed that the experimental group had significant gains in working memory compared to the control group. The present study clearly establishes a link between chess training and working memory. The transfer of chess training to the improvement of working memory could be attributed to the fact that while playing chess, children evaluate positions, visualize new positions in their mind, analyze the pros and cons of each move, and choose moves based on the information stored in their mind. If working-memory’s capacity could be expanded or made to function more efficiently, it could result in the improvement of executive functions as well as the scholastic performance of the child.

Keywords: chess training, cognitive development, executive functions, school children, working memory

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Authors: Leonel Lipa Cusi, Enrique Nestor Pasquel Carbajal, Laura Marina Navarro Alvarado, José Del Álamo Carazas

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This research analyses the accuracy of the ultrasound and the pulse echo ultrasound technic to find voids and to measure thickness of concrete elements. These mentioned air voids are simulated by polystyrene expanded and hollow containers of thin thickness made of plastic or cardboard of different sizes and shapes. These targets are distributed strategically inside concrete at different depths. For this research, a shear wave pulse echo ultrasonic device of 50 KHz is used to scan the concrete elements. Despite the small measurements of the concrete elements and because of voids’ size are near the half of the wavelength, pre and post processing steps like voltage, gain, SAFT, envelope and time compensation were made in order to improve imaging results.

Keywords: ultrasonic, concrete, thickness, pulse echo, void

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Authors: Ghazal Raheb

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Population growth in big cities of Iran has led to limitation of land resources, more consumption of non-renewable sources of energy and many environmental problems. Emerging of overbuilt urban areas and decreasing amount of green spaces cause the appearance of an undesirable landscape in the cities. Green roof technology is a solution to improve environmental concerns in urban areas which combines green spaces with buildings as the private or semi-private spaces. Successful implementation in different areas definitely depends on accommodation of green roof type with the environment and urban and building typology in Iran. This paper is aiming to provide some recommendation for selecting appropriate type of green roof and executive solutions considering to climatic zoning and urban situation in Iran. Two main aspects which have been considered are environmental and urban typology factors.

Keywords: green roof, urban typology, climate zone, landscape

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Authors: Priyashri Kamlesh Sridhar, Suranga Nanayakkara

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Current frameworks in assessment follow lesson delivery and rely heavily on test performance or teacher’s observations. This, however, neglects the underlying cognitive load during the learning process. Identifying the pivotal points when the load occurs helps design effective pedagogies and tools that respond to learners’ cognitive state. There has been limited research on quantifying cognitive load in preschoolers, real-time. In this study, we recorded electrodermal activity and heart rate variability (HRV) from 10 kindergarteners performing executive function tasks and Johnson Woodcock test of cognitive abilities. Preliminary findings suggest that there are indeed sensitive task-dependent markers in skin conductance (number of SCRs and average amplitude of SCRs) and HRV (mean heart rate and low frequency component) captured during the learning process.

Keywords: early childhood, learning, methodologies, pedagogies

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Authors: Karrar Raoof Kareem Kamoona, Enas Fathi Taher AlHares, Zeynep Isik

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The various disciplines in the construction industry and the co-existence of the people in the various disciplines are what builds well-developed, closely-knit interpersonal skills at various hierarchical levels thus leading to a varied way of leadership. The varied decision making aspects during the lifecycle of a project include: autocratic, participatory and last but not least, free-rein. We can classify some of the decision makers in the construction industry in a hierarchical manner as follows: project executive, project manager, superintendent, office engineer and finally the field engineer. This survey looked at how decisions are made during the construction period by the key stakeholders in the project. From the paper it is evident that the three decision making aspects can be used at different times or at times together in order to bring out the best leadership decision. A blend of different leadership styles should be used to enhance the success rate during the project lifecycle.

Keywords: leadership style, construction, decision-making, built environment

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